WHICH INTERNET COMPANY HASN'T GIVEN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT ITS RECORDS?

June 10, 2013

NEW YORK: Outraged Internet users searching for an alternative to the privacy-busting companies they'd trusted are turning to a company that provides what it calls, "the world's most private search engines."

StartPage and its sister search engine Ixquick were launched in 2006 to staunchly defend their users' privacy and civil liberties. StartPage provides a private portal to Google results, while Ixquick provides private results from other search engines.

The services have not participated in PRISM, nor have they ever provided user data to the U.S. government or to any other government or agency in the U.S. or anywhere in the world.

That is more than nine of the biggest Internet companies -- Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, PalTalk, AOL and Skype -- can say.

"The Privacy of our users rests on three important foundations," explains StartPage and Ixquick CEO Robert Beens. "We are based in the Netherlands, we use encrypted connections, and -- most importantly -- we don't store or share any of our users' personal search data."

No User Data Stored: StartPage and Ixquick never store user data, including IP addresses and search queries, so government agencies have no incentive to ask for these. This privacy is so complete; the company doesn't even know who its customers are, so it can't share anything with Big Brother.

Encrypted (HTTPS) Connections: StartPage and Ixquick were the first search engines to use automatic encryption on all connections to prevent snooping. When searches are encrypted, third parties like ISPs and the NSA can't eavesdrop on Internet connections to see what people are searching for.

Not Under U.S. Jurisdiction: StartPage and Ixquick are based in the Netherlands, so they are not directly subject to U.S. regulations, warrants, or court orders. They can't be forced to participate in spying programs like PRISM. The company has never turned over a single bit of user data to any government entity in the 14 years it has been in business, which is not surprising since there is no data in the first place.

StartPage and Ixquick are also the only search engines whose privacy practices have been independently verified and third-party certified through the European Union's Privacy Seal program.

"Unfortunately, it takes a scandal like PRISM to wake people up to the erosion of privacy", says Harvard-trained privacy expert Dr. Katherine Albrecht, who helped develop StartPage. "As people get fed up with being spied on, they look for alternatives. We already serve nearly 3 million private searches each day, and we expect that number to grow as people seek shelter from search engines that store and share their private information."

The company will expand its privacy services this summer with the addition of a new private email product called StartMail. StartMail will offer a paid, private email platform with strong encryption. Anyone interested in beta testing the program on its release can sign up at www.StartMail.com